Anticancer Effects of Β-Elemene in Gastric Cancer Cells and Its Potential Underlying Proteins: a Proteomic Study
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ONCOLOGY REPORTS 32: 2635-2647, 2014 Anticancer effects of β-elemene in gastric cancer cells and its potential underlying proteins: A proteomic study JUN-SONG LIU, SHI-CAI HE, ZHENG-LIANG ZHANG, RUI CHEN, LIN FAN, GUANG-LIN QIU, SHUAI CHANG, LIANG LI and XIANG-MING CHE Department of General Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Medical College of Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710061, P.R. China Received July 4, 2014; Accepted August 26, 2014 DOI: 10.3892/or.2014.3490 Abstract. Gastric cancer is a common malignancy with a Introduction poor prognosis. β-elemene is a broad-spectrum anticancer drug extracted from the traditional Chinese medicinal herb Gastric cancer is the fourth most common malignancy in Curcuma wenyujin. In the present study, we investigated the the world and the second leading cause of cancer-related anticancer effects of β-elemene in gastric cancer cells and the mortality (1). At present, surgical resection remains the potential proteins involved. Human SGC7901 and MKN45 main therapeutic strategy for gastric cancer, supplemented gastric cancer cells were treated with different concentrations with perioperative chemotherapy, chemoradiotherapy and/or of β-elemene. Cell viability, clonogenic survival and apoptotic immunotherapy (2-5). However, most patients are diagnosed cell death were assessed. β-elemene inhibited viability and with advanced gastric cancer which may have progressed decreased clonogenic survival of gastric cancer cells in a beyond the curative potential of surgical operation (6,7). In dose-dependent manner. Apoptosis induction contributed to addition, previous studies have demonstrated that a consid- the anticancer effects. We then employed a proteomic method, erable proportion of patients receiving potentially curative isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ), to resection experienced recurrences which lead to unfavorable detect the proteins altered by β-elemene. In total, 147 upregu- prognosis (8,9). Adjuvant therapy, such as chemotherapy, lated proteins and 86 downregulated proteins were identified provides rather limited survival advantage (10,11). These facts in response to β-elemene treatment in SGC7901 gastric cancer attest to the deficiency in the current strategies for treating cells. Among them, expression of p21-activated protein gastric cancer and the demand for novel approaches to the kinase-interacting protein 1 (PAK1IP1), Bcl-2-associated tran- management of gastric cancer. scription factor 1 (BTF) and topoisomerase 2-α (TOPIIα) were Among various ingredients eligible for adjuvant therapy validated by western blot analyses and the trends were consis- for gastric cancer, the significance of natural products, tent with iTRAQ results. Top pathways involved in β-elemene particularly the essence extracted from Chinese herbs are treatment in SGC7901 gastric cancer cells included ribo- gaining increasing attention in basic and clinical research (12). some signaling, peroxisome proliferator-activated receptors β-elemene (1-methyl-1-vinyl-2,4-diisopropenyl-cyclohexane) (PPARs) signaling pathway, regulation of actin cytoskeleton, is a novel anticancer agent extracted from the Chinese medicinal phagosome, biosynthesis and metabolism of some amino acids. herb Curcuma wenyujin (13). In recent studies, β-elemene was Collectively, our results suggest a promising therapeutic role shown to have diverse anticancer potential, such as inhibiting of β-elemene in gastric cancer. The differentially expressed proliferation and inducing apoptosis of cancer cells, and inter- proteins provide further insight into the potential mechanisms acting with multiple oncogenic or tumor suppressing signaling involved in gastric cancer treatment using β-elemene. pathways in a broad spectrum of cancers (14-16). Other studies found that β-elemene could enhance tumor chemosensitivity or overcome drug resistance (17,18). In addition, β-elemene has been approved by the China Food and Drug Administration as a therapeutic drug in clinical practice where its efficacy has been exhibited when combined with first‑line chemotherapy Correspondence to: Professor Xiang-Ming Che, Department of for malignant tumors (19,20). However, the mechanisms by General Surgery, The First Affiliated Hospital of Medical College of which β-elemene is involved in tumor suppressing activities Xi'an Jiaotong University, Xi'an, Shaanxi 710061, P.R. China remain largely unknown. E-mail: [email protected] In the present study, we examined the anticancer potential of β-elemene in the proliferation, clonogenic survival and Key words: β-elemene, gastric cancer, proliferation, apoptosis, apoptosis in SGC7901 and MKN45 gastric cancer cells. Then, proteomics in order to investigate the molecules through which β-elemene exhibited its anticancer effects and to obtain a better under- standing of its therapeutic role in gastric cancer, we employed 2636 LIU et al: proteomic analysis of anticancer effects of β-elemene in gastric cancer cells isobaric tags for relative and absolute quantitation (iTRAQ), a number of cells seeding x PE). This assay was carried out in high‑throughput proteomic approach, to profile proteins that duplicate. were differentially expressed following β-elemene treatment in gastric cancer cells. Protein preparation. After SGC7901 cells were treated with or without β-elemene at 30 µg/ml for 48 h, cell total protein Materials and methods was extracted. Protein concentration was determined using Pierce™ BCA Protein Assay (Thermo Scientific, Rockford, Reagents. β-elemene was obtained from Jingang Pharma- IL, USA). Total protein extracted from two separate experi- ceutical Co. (Dalian, China). Annexin V-FITC/PI apoptosis ments was mixed together for use in the subsequent proteomic detection kit was purchased from 7 Sea Pharmacy Technology analysis. Protein samples were reduced and alkylated, then (Shanghai, China). iTRAQ reagents were from Applied added into 5‑fold volume of ice‑cold acetone and put in ‑20˚C Biosystems (New York, NY, USA). Anti-PAK1IP1 antibody condition overnight. Then, the precipitate was harvested by was purchased from Abcam (#ab67348; UK). Anti-TOPIIα centrifugation at 25,000 x g at 4˚C for 20 min and dried in the antibody was obtained from Proteintech (#20233-1-AP; USA). air for 5 min. The precipitate was dissolved in 200 µl 0.5 M Anti-BTF antibody was from BD Biosciences Pharmingen tetraethylammonium bromide (TEAB) and dealt with sonicate (#611726; San Diego, CA, USA). for 15 min. Finally, the supernatant was harvested and quanti- fied. Cell culture. The SGC7901 and MKN45 human gastric cancer cell lines were obtained from the Lab Animal Centre of the iTRAQ proteomic analysis. One hundred micrograms of protein Fourth Military Medical University (Xi'an, China). Cells were were taken out from each sample and digested with trypsin. cultured in RPMI-1640 medium (HyClone, USA), supple- Thereafter, the peptides of each sample were labeled with mented with 10% fetal bovine serum (Sijiqing, Huzhou City, iTRAQ reagents respectively, according to the manufacturer's China) at 37˚C with 5% CO2 in a humidified atmosphere. protocol (Applied Biosystems) (SGC7901-control-114 tag and SGC7901-β-elemene treated-115 tag). Then, the labeled MTT assay. Cell viability was measured using 3-(4,5-dimethyl- samples were pooled and sent to fractionating using strong thiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazolium bromide (MTT) assay. cation exchange (SCX) chromatography (Shimadzu LC-20AB The cells were seeded in 24-well plates at 5-10x104/well. After HPLC Pump system and the 4.6x250 mm Ultremex SCX overnight incubation, cells were exposed to different concen- column). After elution, 20 fractions of peptides were obtained. trations of β-elemene for 24-72 h. Then, 50 µl MTT (5 mg/ml) Each fraction was then desalted by Strata-X C18 column was added to each well and the cells were incubated for another (Phenomenex) and vacuum-dried. Each fraction of peptides 4 h at 37˚C. After gentle removal of the supernatant, 500 µl was resuspended in buffer A (5% ACN, 0.1% FA) and dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO) was added to each well to solu- centrifuged at 20,000 x g for 10 min to remove the insoluble bilize the purple formazan crystal. The optical density (OD) substances. In each fraction, the final concentration of peptides was measured using a microplate reader at 490 nm and then was ~0.5 µg/µl. Five microlitres (~2.5 µg) of supernatant transformed into cell viability using the following formula: was loaded onto a Shimadzu LC-20AD nano HPLC by the Cell viability = (OD of the experimental sample)/(OD of the autosampler for separation. Mass spectrometric analysis of the control sample) x 100%. iTRAQ labelled peptides was performed using a Q Exactive (Thermo Fisher Scientific, San Jose, CA, USA) coupled online Annexin V-FITC/PI apoptosis detection assay. To explore the to the HPLC. Data processing of LC-MS/MS samples was effect of β-elemene on apoptotic cell death, Annexin V-FITC/PI searched against the International Protein Index (IPI) human apoptosis detection assay was used. The cells were seeded in protein database version 3.87 FASTA (91,464 sequences) using 6-well plates at 3x105/well. After overnight incubation, cells Mascot 2.3.02 software (Matrix Science, UK). When the fold- were exposed to different concentrations of β-elemene for change of protein abundance was >1.2 and the P-value was 24 h. Then, cells were collected and manipulated following the <0.05, we defined this protein as differentially expressed. The manufacturer's instructions, incubated with Annexin V-FITC identified proteins were categorized according to the Gene and propidium iodide (PI), then analyzed using flow cytometry Ontology (GO) classification terms (http://www.geneontology. (FCM; BD Biosciences-Clontech, Palo Alto, CA, USA) within org/). GO enrichment analysis was performed to display the 30 min. GO terms which the differentially expressed proteins enriched in all identified proteins. Clonogenic survival assay. Cells were trypsinized and counted. Then, 200 cells were seeded into each well of Western blot analyses. Equal amounts of protein samples 6-well plates. After overnight incubation for attachment and were subjected to SDS-PAGE.